H807: City College Southampton (1.12.05)

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Reading through the H807 case studies – the course materials require me tomake blog entries.

The one I’ve just read is ‘Any time, any place learning: Multimedia learning with mobile phones’. It’s based on an initiative at City College, Southampton.

They provide ESOL students with whizzy mobile phones which have camera and PDA abilities.

Then eg the lecturers upload an image such as a map of the college campus and create zones within it. Learners work in pairs to send images and messages from each zone, and a composite picture is built up.

This is to help students integrate and to help them develop linguistically. As the course goes on they can be asked to do more grammatically complex things and to find out information and answer questions.

There’s a claim that learners are practising ‘grammar, idiom and pronunciation’. I’m not quite sure how this works. They get to record audio files, but there doesn’t seem to be much talking going on.

I must say, I’d be wary about teaching people English in an environment which requires a lot of texting. Is there not a danger of developing some bizarre Pidgin English style based on learning the language via text messages?

It does sound good fun, though, and I think I’d enjoy learning a foreign language in this way. They don’t say what happens if you come from a background that uses a different character set.

H807: Innovation (30.11.05)

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I’ve started looking at the H807 course materials, which I’m reviewing. I’m supposed to jot down a few initial ideas of my own on innovation in e-learning. E-learning is to be understood as ‘learning facilitated and supported by the use of information and communications technology (desktop and laptop computers, mobile and wireless devices, electronic communications, software and virtual learning environments)

It specifically says don’t bother to examine the concept of e-learning, so I won’t waste time trying to pick that definition to pieces.

Innovation, then. Well, it’s doing something new. Except it’s not quite, because I’d be doing something new if I went to Slough, but I don’t think I could claim that was innovative. And it’s not the same as invention.

Is it using existing objects and methods in new ways? How long would things stay innovative? Are they innovative the first time they are done, or the first time someone new does them, or for a few months or a year?

So an innovation in e-learning would involve using ICT for some learning purpose for which it had not been used before. Or it could be using a familiar bit of ICT for a new learning purpose. Or it could be using a familiar bit of ICT in a familiar way but using it with a new set of learners.

For example?

Well, picking on the video ipod. If I used that to show a video clip of Pride and Pred to a seminar group, that would be innovative. It would probably still be fairly innovative the next term, and it would be old-hat after a year.

If we had the video ipod for a year and I gave them to everyone in a seminar group and asked them to work together to identify the elements of an ideal happy ending, that would probably be innovative again.

If I then took the video ipods to a nursery class and showed them clips from Disney movies and talked with them about what made them happy, that would be innovative.

I guess it’s pretty easy to be innovative with a new technology, because anything you do with it in an elearning context is going to be innovative.

‘Innovative’ has a sort of shiny, happy flavour for it, but I guess most new uses/applications of technology must be unsuccessful. So perhaps it only counts as true innovation if it endures, or influences others or is successful in some way.

Inventing a car with red headlights thus wouldn’t be classed as innovative, but as stupid.

OK. That’s enough on innovation.

Charles Crook (28.11.05)

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Looking at Crook, C. (1994) Computers and the collaborative experience of learning Routledge, London which was lent to me by Karen.

There’s a bit in the intro which I like, though it probably has no bearing on what I am studying. Apparently, Schelling carried out a study in which people were asked how they would set about meeting an unknown person in Manhattan on a particular date. All they knew about the stranger was that s/he knew the same things about the world as they did. They headed for the clock in Grand Central Station. See more at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schelling_point

Interesting to speculate what the Schelling Point is for towns (Milton Keynes: Xscape?) Perhaps it’s even easier for countries: Eiffel Tower, Acropolis, Taj Mahal, Big Ben…

Alright, already, back to the work…

Hiatus (28.11.05)

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Seem to have been doing a lot recently: puting together a poster, applying to be an AL on H807, having lunch with John and Linda, organising WIP workshop, attending Knowledge Network training. Would be good if there were time to get some work done!

And now I’ve lost my PDA. Damn. Where can it be? 🙁

Gill commented:
LOL – reminds me of the day I lost my Clutter Clearing book amongst the mass of papers in my study!!!
Comment from euphloozie – 05/12/05 19:24

Successful communities (18.11.05)

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I had this under another entry, but it became a major issue, so I’ve moved it to its own posting.

Interesting about Ostrom is that she is looking at successful communities. What makes a learning community successful? Its learners are inspired? All learners construct some knowledge? Knowledge is constructed? All students pass the course? All students get good grades? I guess it’s possible for a learning community to be successful in its designers’ terms (student retention is excellent and grades are good) and in students’ terms (workload is not too high and grades are good) without it being successful in terms of being a generic learning community (eg information is shared but little or no knowledge construction goes on). I suppose in that case it would be a successful community but not a successful learning community.

So, does the OU definitely want learning communities? Say they started a FirstClass conference and it really got on to something and constructed a whole new theory BUT this overwhelmed students and a lot of them just gave up, would this be a successful learning community? Would the OU be happy with this?

I guess the OU has its own agenda, and wants to promote certain types of learning communities, which are open and inclusive. After all, Oxbridge has been successful in creating elitist learning communities where lots of knowledge is constructed by lots of people are being excluded.

So, it looks as though there are different types of learning community. The OU, I guess, wants inclusive learning communities which empower all students to learn (and, as a sub-text, aid retention and grades).

Design principles (18.11.05)

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Back in 1994, Mike Godwin drew up these principles for making virtual communities work:
* use software that promotes good discussion
* Don’t impose a length limitation on postings
* Front-load your system with talkative, diverse people
* Let the users resolve their own disputes
* Provide institutional memory
* Promote continuity
* Be host to a particular interest group
* Provide places for children
* Confront the users with a crisis.
It would be interesting to see whehter anyone took these principles and ran with them. Do users resolve their own disputes, or do they leave? What are the benefits of including children in a community? What diffeence does it make to a community when you impose a word limit on postings?

In general, I think this old (9!) stuff tends to be irrelevant. So much has changed. Users, software, designers are all more sophisticated. Do Godwin’s principles have more than historical interest?

Gill commented:
All very good guidelines. However, in view of the results of your U800 survey (in which many of your respondents felt intimidated by the online conferences and thought that they were a vehicle for the more confident students to brag about their TMA scores amongst other things – hope I’ve paraphrased correctly) I now begin to wonder about the frontloading with talkative diverse people aspect.

It seems like a double-edged sword. If you do not have talkative diverse people, then the conference will die through lack of use. If you have a core of talkative diverse people, there are bound to be some who feel intimidated.

My experience (as one of the talkative diverse people that got front-loaded onto H806) was that the collaborative activities where we were split into quite small groups, helped the less confident to grow in confidence. Many of the non VLE based courses, i.e. those where collaboration online is not an assessed part of the course, may suffer because the quieter members have no impetus to get over their fear and gain confidence.

From the responses to your survey that you described to me, many people felt excluded from the online interactions and therefore felt no desire to join in.

I guess what I’m saying is that you need some activities that oblige all students to join in at the start. Just making the online conferences available with a group of chatty members in the hope that all will make use of it may not work too well.
Comment from euphloozie – 26/11/05 12:22

Design rinciples (18.11.05)

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Now I’m reading a piece by Peter Kollock. I think it was a conference paper, as it’s quite short. He looks at theories of community which could be applied to internet communities.

Looking at them, I think i shows that the theory was generally wrong – these aren’t guidelines for all types of community as they don’t fit virtual communities.

So, communities and virtual communities are different. OK, nothing very surprising there.

He looks at Axelrod’s requirements for the possibility of cooperation. I don’t know how widely cited these are – but I can pick holes in them after about 10 seconds’ thought, so I’ll ignore those.

Then he looks at Ostrom’s design principles of successful communities:
* Group boundaries are clearly defined
* Rules governing the use of collective goods are well matched to local needs and conditions
* Most individuals affected by these rules can participate in modifying the rules
* the right of community members to devise their own rules is respected by external authorities
* A system for monitoring members’ behaviour exists; this monitoring is undertaken by the community members themselves
* A graduated system of sanctions is used
* Community members have access to low-cost conflict resolution mechanisms.
These seem very democratic – I’m not sure a feudal community would work with this definition. In fact, I think ‘most individuals affected by these rules can participate in modifying the rules’ is the most problematic. Would this work in a convent, a tyranny, a primary school..?

They’re interesting considerations, but I don’t think I’d taken them as the basis for setting up a FirstClass conference.

Ruth Brown response (18.11.05)

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Ruth got back to me fairly quickly and now I have a useful reference to follow up.

Hello Rebecca —

I’m glad that you found my research interesting. Yes, it was based on my
Ph.D. dissertation which is in the University of Nebraska at Lincoln
library. It is also available through ProQuest which can be found on the
internet. ProQuest can actually send you a digital version of my
dissertation.

No, I have not published anything lately on this topic. I’ve gotten
sidetracked by other interesting topics.

–Ruth
Ruth E. Brown, Ph.D.
associate professor

Contacting researchers: Ruth Brown (17.11.05)

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Why did I find it necessary to say I was a first year?

Dear Dr Brown,

I am a first-year PhD student in the UK, researching social presence and the development of online learning communities.

I have just finished reading your JALN article ‘The process of community-building in distance learning classes’, which I found very interesting. I found the 15-step process of community building particularly helpful. I wondered whether you had published anything else on this subject? I haven’t been able to track any of your other publications down through our library – it isn’t always strong on publications from the US.

Was the article based on your PhD thesis and, if so, would I be able to access that?

Thank you for your help,
Rebecca Ferguson
Open University, UK

Contacting researchers: Burnett in Tallahassee (17.11.05)

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I’ve decided to make a point of emailing researchers when I have read their article and found it useful.

This was recommended in U500 last year, and seems like a good idea. Apart from the fact that they might get back to me with some useful ideas or references, it also helps me to fix their identities in my head, and to consider their ideas so that I can make a short comment to show I’ve read the article, and ask a meaningful question.

Here’s what I’ve sent to Gary Burnett:

Dear Gary,

I’m a PhD student in the United Kingdom researching virtual learning communities. I’ve just been reading your article ‘Information exchange in virtual communities: a typology’ in Information Research and found it very interesting. I now have a stack of articles from your bibliography piled up on my desk 🙂

You stated in the article that ‘…all interactions within a virtual community take place in public’ but you also cite Katz, who argues that the public interactions within a virtual community are just the tip of the iceberg and that much of the most useful information exchange goes on in private, in one-to-one email exchanges. I wondered if you had considered including such interactions within your typology or if you felt them too inaccessible to be classified?

Regards
Rebecca Ferguson
Open University

Anesa commented:
Did you get any reply from him?? Was wondering if I should do this … but thought I should only ask them if I really thought I wanted a clarification. Did you want a clarification or did you think up just a question to get into contact with him?
Comment from anesahosein – 01/12/05 16:33